The New Face of Design

“Designers are born with an identity crisis—it’s the nature of all we desire to be and do. We are strategists, implementers in any media or form and successful entrepreneurs. We want a seat at the CEO’s table when business decisions are made, to hold our own in an argument with the McKinsey consultant, to understand customers better than the client does and to deliver creative breakthroughs at every turn. We want to do different things all the time, and do them in wildly diverging industries and contexts. We get bored if we don’t. We hate being limited by our own experience, and bristle at somebody else’s perception of what we’re equipped to do. Because of this, we struggle to capture in words what a designer is and does across all these disparate silos and roles.

There is a word for someone who refuses to be pigeonholed, happily choosing to be broad instead of deep. The word is generalist.”